United States v. Klein (80 U.S. 128)

[Syllabus from pages 128-130 intentionally omitted] behalf of the United States, to remand an appeal from the Court of Claims which the government had taken in June, 1869, with a mandate that the same be dismissed for want of jurisdiction as now required by law.

The case was thus:

Congress, during the progress of the late rebellion, passed various laws to regulate the subject of forfeiture, confiscation, or appropriation to public use without compensation, of private property whether real or personal of non-combatant enemies.

The first was the act of July 13th, 1861. It made liable to seizure and forfeiture all property passing to and fro between the loyal and insurrectionary States, and the vessels and vehicles by which it should be attempted to be conveyed.

So an act of August 6th, 1861, subjected to seizure and forfeiture all property of every kind, used or intended to be used in aiding, abetting, or promoting the insurrection, or allowing or permitting it to be so used.

These statutes require judicial condemnation to make the forfeiture complete.

A more general law, and one upon which most of the seizures made during the rebellion was founded, is the act of July 17th, 1862. It provides for the punishment of treason, and specifies its disqualifications and disabilities. In its sixth section, it provides that every person who shall be engaged in or be aiding the rebellion, and shall not cease and return to his allegiance within sixty days after proclamation made by the President of the United States, shall forfeit all his property, &c. The proclamation required by this act was issued by the President on the 25th day of July, 1862. The sixty days expired September 23d, 1862.

On the 12th of March, 1863, Congress passed another species of act-the one entitled 'An act to provide for the collection of abandoned property, &c., in insurrectionary districts within the United States.' The statute authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to appoint special agents to receive and collect all abandoned or captured property in any State or Territory in insurrection: 'Provided, That such property shall not include any kind or description which has been used, or which was intended to be used, for waging or carrying on war against the United States, such as arms, ordnance, ships, steamboats, or other watercraft, and their furniture, forage, military supplies, or munitions of war.'

The statute went on:

'And any person claiming to have been the owner of any such abandoned or captured property may, at any time within two years after the suppression of the rebellion, prefer his claim to the proceeds thereof in the Court of Claims; and on proof to the satisfaction of said court of his ownership of said property, of his right to the proceeds thereof, and that he has never given any aid or comfort to the present rebellion, to receive the residue of such proceeds after the deduction of any purchase-money which may have been paid, together with the expense of transportation and sale of said property, and any other lawful expenses attending the disposition thereof.'

Some other acts, amendatory of this one or relating to the Court of Claims, required proof of the petitioner's loyalty during the rebellion as a condition precedent to recovery.

By the already-mentioned confiscation act of July 17th, 1862, the President was authorized by proclamation to extend to persons who had participated in rebellion, pardon, and amnesty, with such exceptions, and at such times, and on such conditions as he should deem expedient for the public welfare.

And on the 8th of December, 1863, he did issue his proclamation, reciting the act, and that certain persons who had been engaged in the rebellion desired to resume their allegiance and reinaugurate loyal State governments within and for their respective States. And thereupon proclaimed that a full pardon should be thereby granted to them, with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall have intervened; and upon condition that every such person shall take and subscribe a prescribed oath of allegiance, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath inviolate, &c.

Under this proclamation, V. F. Wilson, who during the rebellion had voluntarily become the surety on the official bonds of certain officers of the rebel confederacy, and so given aid and comfort, to it, took, February 15th, 1864, this oath of allegiance, and had kept the same inviolate.

He himself having died in 1865, one Klein, his administrator, filed a petition in the Court of Claims, setting forth Wilson's ownership of certain cotton which he had abandoned to the treasury agents of the United States, and which they had sold; putting the proceeds into the Treasury of the United States, where they now were, and from which the petitioner sought to obtain them. This petition was filed December 26th, 1865.

The section of the act of 1862, by which the President was authorized to extend pardon and amnesty on such conditions as he should deem expedient for the public welfare, was repealed on the 21st of January, 1867.

The Court of Claims, on the 26th May, 1869, decided that Wilson had been entitled to receive the proceeds of his cotton, and decreed $125,300 to Klein, the administrator of his estate. An appeal was taken by the United States June 3d, following, and filed in this court on the 11th December, of the same year.

Previously to this case of Klein's the Court of Claims had had before it the case of one Padelford, quite like this one; for there also the claimant, who had abandoned his cotton and now claimed its proceeds, having participated in the rebellion, had taken the amnesty oath. The Court of Claims held that the oath cured his participation in the rebellion, and so it gave him a decree for the proceeds of his cotton in the treasury. The United States brought that case here by appeal, and the decree of the Court of Claims was affirmed; this court declaring that although Padelford had participated in the rebellion, yet, that having been pardoned, he was as innocent in law as though he had never participated, and that his property was purged of whatever offence he had committed and relieved from any penalty that he might have incurred. The judgment of this court, to the effect above mentioned, was publicly announced on the 30th of April, 1870.

Soon after this-the bill making appropriations for the legislative, executive, and judicial expenses of the government for the year 1870-71, then pending in Congress-the following was introduced as a proviso to an appropriation of $100,000, in the first section, for the payment of judgments in the Court of Claims, and with this proviso in it the bill became a law July 12th, 1870:

'Provided, That no pardon or amnesty granted by the President, whether general or special, by proclamation or otherwise, nor any acceptance of such pardon or amnesty, nor oath taken, or other act performed in pursuance or as a condition thereof, shall be admissible in evidence on the part of any claimant in the Court of Claims as evidence in support of any claim against the United States, or to establish the standing of any claimant in said court, or his right to bring or maintain suit therein; nor shall any such pardon, amnesty, acceptance, oath, or other act as aforesaid, heretofore offered or put in evidence on behalf of any claimant in said court, be used or considered by said court, or by the appellate court on appeal from said court, in deciding upon the claim of said claimant, or any appeal therefrom, as any part of the proof to sustain the claim of the claimant, or to entitle him to maintain his action in said Court of Claims, or on appeal therefrom; but the proof of loyalty required by the Abandoned and Captured Property Act, and by the sections of several acts quoted, shall be made by proof of the matters required, irrespective of the effect of any executive proclamation, pardon, amnesty, or other act of condonation or oblivion. And in all cases where judgment shall have been heretofore rendered in the Court of Claims in favor of any claimant, on any other proof of loyalty than such as is above required and provided, and which is hereby declared to have been and to be the true intent and meaning of said respective acts, the Supreme Court shall, on appeal, have no further jurisdiction of the cause, and shall dismiss the same for want of jurisdiction.

'And provided further, That whenever any pardon shall have heretofore been granted by the President of the United States to any person bringing suit in the Court of Claims for the proceeds of abandoned or captured property under the said act, approved 12th March, 1863, and the acts amendatory of the same, and such pardon shall recite in substance that such person took part in the late rebellion against the government of the United States, or was guilty of any act of rebellion against, or disloyalty to, the United States; and such pardon shall have been accepted in writing by the person to whom the same issued without an express disclaimer of, and protestation against, such fact of guilt contained in such acceptance, such pardon and acceptance shall be taken and deemed in such suit in the said Court of Claims, and on appeal therefrom, conclusive evidence that such person did take part in, and give aid and comfort to, the late rebellion, and did not maintain true allegiance or consistently adhere to the United States; and on proof of such pardon and acceptance, which proof may be heard summarily on motion or otherwise, the jurisdiction of the court in the case shall cease, and the court shall forthwith dismiss the suit of such claimant.'

The motion already mentioned, of the Attorney-General, that the case be remanded to the Court of Claims with a mandate that the same be dismissed for want of jurisdiction, as now required by law, was, of course, founded on this enactment in the appropriation bill of July 12th, 1870.

Mr. Akerman, Attorney-General, Mr. Bristow, Solicitor-General, and Mr. C. H. Hill, Assistant Attorney-General, in support of the motion:

The United States as sovereign are not liable to suit at all, and if they submit themselves to suit it is ex grati a, and on such terms as they may see fit.

Accordingly the right of the Court of Claims to entertain jurisdiction of cases in which the United States are defendants, and to render judgments against them, exists only by virtue of acts of Congress granting such jurisdiction, and it is limited precisely to such cases, both in regard to parties and to the cause of action, as Congress has prescribed, which body may also define the terms on which judgments shall be rendered against the government, either as to classes of cases or as to individual cases.

Rules of evidence are at all times subject to legislative modification and control, and the alterations which are enacted therein by the legislature may be made applicable as well to existing as to future causes of action. In prescribing the evidence which shall be received in its courts, and the effect of that evidence, the state is exercising its acknowledged powers.

From the foregoing propositions it follows:

1. That Congress may prescribe what shall or shall not be received in evidence in support of a claim on which suit is brought against the government, or in support of the right of the claimant to maintain his suit, and, on the other hand, may declare what shall be the effect of certain evidence when offered in behalf of the government.

2. That it may withdraw entirely from the consideration of the court evidence of a particular kind in behalf of the claimant, even after the same has been submitted to and received by the court.

3. That it may, upon the presentation of proof of a certain description in behalf of the government, determine the jurisdiction of the court over the particular subject.

4. That it may, even in cases where judgment has been rendered in favor of the claimant on certain proof, and notwithstanding the proof was competent at the time of the rendering of the judgment, interpose when such cases are afterwards brought before the appellate court and require the same to be dismissed by the latter.

These different things are what are done, and no more is done by different parts of the proviso in question.

Messrs. Bartley and Casey, P. Phillips, Carlisle, McPherson, and T. D. Lincoln, arguing in this or similar cases against the motion.

The CHIEF JUSTICE delivered the opinion of the court.